


The Pitfalls of Angelic Powers

by noiproksa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Healing, Angel Powers, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Made Family, Team Free Will, Touching, Witch Curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-09-21 06:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17038514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiproksa/pseuds/noiproksa
Summary: When Dean temporarily finds himself with Cas’ powers, he realizes that getting a handle on angelic powers is more difficult than thought. Cas has to show him how to use them responsibly, revealing some secrets in the process.(Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)





	1. Chapter 1

“If you get injured—all you have to do is heal yourself.”

“And yet, I heal _you_ more often than I heal myself.”

“That’s because the only thing that _can_ hurt you is an angel blade.”

“You don’t have to listen to all the prayers all the time. It can get very tiresome.”

“You get to _smite_ things. How cool is that?”

“What’s going on here?” Sam asked as he entered the control room, where Cas and Dean were currently sitting at the table and discussing who had the easier life: angels or humans. Dean, who was sitting with his feet up on the table and leaning back in his chair, felt like he had the upper hand—what was not cool about having angelic powers?

“I’m listing all the reasons why Cas should be glad that he’s an angel,” Dean explained.

“Oh, have you mentioned telekinesis, yet?” Sam asked as he pulled out a chair to join them. “That would be my favorite angelic power, I think.”

Dean looked at Cas smugly. Another point for him. Seemed like Sammy had joined his team.

But Castiel, stubborn Angel of the Lord that he was, didn’t give up easily. “Your souls go to your personal Heaven after you die,” he retorted. “Angels don’t have a soul and have to go to the Empty after death.”

“But angels don’t usually die,” Dean pointed out. “They get to live for all eternity.”

Cas was looking at him unimpressed. Okay, right. So many angels had died during the last few years that Cas probably knew more dead ones than ones that were still alive at the moment.

In order to distract from his last point, Dean snapped his fingers as he thought of something else. “Angel radio! You can just communicate with your brothers and sisters no matter how far apart you are.”

“But the voices inside your head can be very overwhelming and give you a headache,” Cas countered. “Besides, humans have invented cell phones. You make do just fine without telepathy.”

“Poor cell phone coverage,” Sam threw in and when both Dean and Cas turned to look at him, he shrugged his shoulders. “Angel radio isn’t subject to cell phone towers or satellites.”

Dean, meanwhile, shook his head and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Being an angel is so lost on you, man.”

“As the only one in this room who has been both, angel _and_ human, I believe I am more qualified to form an opinion about the topic,” Cas stated. Leave it to him to play _that_ card. “I _am_ grateful that I do not have to deal with pointless human things like digestion or earning money. All I am saying is that being an angel is not as easy and fun as you would like to believe.”

Dean felt that that was as good an admission of having lost the argument as he was going to get, so he nodded and said, “Sure.” to appease the angel. Still, no one could tell him that having powers like healing someone or smiting demons was anything but seriously cool.

***

Being able to smite things would have come in really handy a couple days later when Team Free Will were fighting a witch they had followed to an abandoned church where she got ready for some nefarious ritual.

Currently, the witch had her hand wrapped around Dean’s throat and was lifting him off his feet—using magic, no doubt, since such an act should not have been possible for a woman of her tiny stature. Sam was lying on the floor next to the altar, knocked out cold from a spell the witch had hit him with.

Luckily, Cas had his smitey look on his face as he was approaching the witch from behind. Yeah, she was so gonna get what she deserved. Dean tried to get air into his lungs as he clawed at the witch’s hand around his throat. He closed his eyes tight as he struggled, waiting for Cas to lay his hand on the witch’s head and end her for good.

The witch, however, seemed to sense Cas’ presence because she let go of Dean abruptly who fell to the floor, clutching at his own throat and gasping for air. Since he was busy getting enough air, he didn’t quite follow what was happening between Cas and the witch. There was some muttering in an ancient language and the next thing Dean was aware of was some invisible force that knocked the breath he had just been able to take right out of him. Somehow, he felt much more clear-headed from one second to the next and was finally able to stumble to his feet.

When he looked up, Cas had his hand on the witch’s head at last—but nothing happened. The witch was smirking in a way Dean didn’t like at all. Then she copied Cas’ smiting gesture and Dean felt his stomach drop. But again, nothing happened, which seemed to confuse both Cas and the witch who just looked at each other for a moment, both with their hands on each other’s heads.

Dean in the meantime was looking around frantically for the gun he had dropped early on in the fight. A witch-killing bullet would be great right about now. The motion got the witch’s attention, who looked at him with a frown on her face. Then she quickly took a step away from Cas and flung the stunned angel against the altar as she had done with Sam before. Just as Dean found the gun and made a dash for it, the witch suddenly gave up and fled.

Dean debated going after her for a moment, but decided to check on Cas and Sam instead.

Cas was rubbing his head, drops of blood trickling down the side of his face. That was… disconcerting.

“Hey, you okay?” Dean asked as he knelt down beside Cas.

“I believe so,” Cas answered slowly, propping himself up against the altar. This was enough reassurance for Dean to go check on Sam who was lying a few feet away and didn’t seem to be injured badly—there was no blood at all—but who was still unconscious.

“What the hell was that back there?” Dean threw over his shoulder at Cas, as he was slapping Sam’s face lightly, trying and failing to get him to wake up.

“I don’t seem to be able to access my grace,” Cas replied.

Super. Just what they needed. “So, you can’t heal Sammy?” Dean asked, motioning to his brother.

“I can try,” Cas said, reaching over and letting his hand hover over Sam’s head. As expected, nothing happened, Cas’ hand didn’t so much as glow.

“That mean you can’t heal your own wound either?” Dean asked and couldn’t keep himself from raising his hand to Cas’ forehead and gently touching the cut above his eyebrow. Ouch. That might need stitches. Dean felt a wave of compassion and affection wash over him and the next moment he felt a warm tingle pass through his hand, which began to glow faintly.

“Whoa!” Dean yelped. “What’s happening?” Still he left his hand right where it was because the prickling just felt so goddamn nice and somehow he just knew that it wasn’t his hand alone, but the contact with Cas’ face.

When the tingling finally subsided, Dean let go of Cas. The cut and the blood were gone.

“Thank you, Dean, that feels much better,” Cas said with a relieved sigh. Then he blinked and his eyes grew wide. “You do not have the ability to heal,” he stated as if he had just realized that.

“Uhm… I think I know where your mojo went?” Dean said, staring down at his own hand in confusion and wonder. The golden glow was gone and his hand had returned to its normal state as if nothing had happened.

Dean immediately turned back to Sammy and laid his hand on his brother’s forehead. This time, nothing did in fact happen.

“A little bit of direction here?” he threw over his shoulder since he had no idea how this whole healing business worked. Accessing the power was not as easy as he had imagined. Even though it had seemed easy enough just then with Cas.

“You don’t need to touch him. You can just… hold your hand a few inches above him,” Cas explained. “That makes it easier to let the healing energy permeate the whole body.”

Dean darted a quick look at him over his shoulder as he drew his eyebrows together. “What—seriously? You touch me all the time when you heal me.”

“Well, it is… uhm… more convenient… more difficult—less difficult, I meant to say… more effective if you will…” Cas was stumbling over his words, clearly making up shit.

“Uh-huh,” Dean said, unimpressed. “You just said it was easier with the hovering instead of the touching.”

“Do you want my advice or not?” Cas snapped, and Dean decided that rousing Sam was the priority here. He would come back to this discussion later.

“Okay, I’m holding my hand above him. Now what?” His hands did not start to glow, and Sam was still out like a light.

“You let the healing energy flow into him,” Cas explained, ever so helpful.

“No shit.—How do I do that?” Dean was starting to get impatient.

At that moment, however, Sam woke up on his own. He groaned and squeezed his eyes together, rubbing his head as he sat up and swatting at Dean’s hands that were still hovering over him.

“Nice of you to join us,” Dean snarked, in an attempt to cover up his relief.

Sam just ignored his comment and asked instead, “You got the witch?”

“She got away,” Cas answered shortly as he got up off the floor.

“But not before she took away Cas’ mojo and transferred it to me,” Dean added while he was helping Sam to his feet as well.

“Yeah, right,” Sam laughed. When neither Cas nor Dean joined him in his laughter, his smile froze on his face and he said, “Seriously?—Why would the witch give you Cas’ powers?”

“I do not believe it was intentional,” Cas explained. “She most likely wanted to take them for herself.”

“So what, you’re… human?” Sam asked.

“I still _have_ my grace,” Cas said. “I’m simply not able to access it.”

“Same difference,” Dean mumbled, which earned him a glare from Cas. “Come on,” Dean said. “This church is creepy as hell. Let’s get outa here.”

He brushed past Sam and clapped his hand on Cas’ shoulder on his way towards the entrance. Immediately he felt a wave of concern hit him.

“What if I don’t get my powers back?” Cas asked, his voice unusually drenched with worry.

“Don’t worry,” Dean immediately reassured him. “We’ll get them back.”

“Get who back?” Sam asked from behind.

Dean turned around, shooting an incredulous look at Sam. “What did he just say? His powers.”

“Uhm… Dean?” Sam said, stopping dead in his tracks. “He didn’t say anything.—Wait. Can you read minds now, too? That is so cool.”

“That is not ‘cool,’” Cas disagreed, frowning at Sam’s enthusiasm. “That is…” He turned to Dean. “How did you call it? An invasion of privacy.”

Dean didn’t have time to rub it in Cas’ face that he now knew how Dean had felt on multiple occasions. He was still stuck at the fact that he had not even realized what he had done. “You seriously didn’t say that out loud?”

“I did not. You have to concentrate on blocking out thoughts you do not want to listen to,” Cas explained. “Especially when you touch someone.”

A feeling of unease grabbed hold of Dean then, but since he knew it wasn’t his own, he tried to do what Cas had said and pushed it away. This was turning out to be more complicated than awesome. He hadn’t even been able to heal his own brother and now he was feeling emotions that weren’t his own. They should definitely hurry up to find a way to reverse that damned spell.


	2. Chapter 2

Back at the motel it didn’t take them (or more accurately, Sam) long to figure out where the witch had probably gone. Great. Taking a while to relax might have been nice before going up against her again. But the sooner they figured this whole thing out, the better.

They were all sitting around the table in the motel room and Cas was just getting up from his chair after Sam had told them where they needed to go in order to find the witch.

“Oh no. You stay here,” Dean ordered. “You’ll just get hurt without your powers.” Then he turned to Sam. “Maybe one of us should stay with him. Make sure there’s no unexpected side effect to this power transfer curse.”

“Dibs on Sam,” Cas said immediately as he was lowering himself back down into his chair.

Both Sam and Dean turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.

“That’s not how calling dibs works,” Dean told him.

Sam, however, was smiling. “Don’t listen to him,” he reassured Cas. “That’s exactly how calling dibs works.”

“What are you talking about? It’s most definitely not. In this case, _Sam or me_ would have to call dibs…” Dean began to explain, but was interrupted by Cas.

“Quick, Sam! Call dibs.”

“Dibs,” Sam said dutifully, the smile still on his face. Gloating bastard.

“I’m trying real hard not to feel insulted here,” Dean grumbled. He tried to play it off, but in reality, he did feel a slight pang of rejection. What the hell? Why did Cas prefer Sam’s presence over his own all of a sudden?

Sam finally wiped that stupid smile off his face and turned serious. “Seriously, though. I think maybe _I_ should be the one to take care of the witch,” he said. “You can’t control Cas’ powers, so who knows what could happen.”

“I could smite her ass,” Dean said because the angelic powers were clearly their biggest advantage here. As much as it had injured his pride that Cas had immediately chosen Sam over him to stay in the motel with him, it did make sense for Dean to be the one to go.

“Or you could smite yourself,” Sam pointed out.

“I don’t think it is possible to smite yourself,” Cas deadpanned.

“You ever tried?” Sam asked, his eyebrows almost burying themselves in his hairline.

Cas narrowed his eyes. “Why would one try to smite oneself?”

“That’s my point,” Sam explained. “We don’t know what could happen.”

While Dean didn’t like the thought of Sam going up against a witch by himself, his brother did have a point. Dean didn’t have a handle on these strange powers and that might be more of a disadvantage in a fight against a witch.

Holding up a warning finger, Dean said, “No confrontation. Shoot her from behind for all I care. And whatever you do, don’t let her hex you.—Oh, and you check in regularly.”

Sam rolled his eyes as he always did when he felt that Dean was being overprotective (which he wasn’t). “Promise I’ll be back before dark,” he said sarcastically, already holding out his hand for the car keys.

“That will be impossible,” Cas stated. “It is already getting dark and it will take you approximately half an hour to get there…”

“That’s okay,” Dean interrupted him as he handed over the keys. “We’ll wait up.”

Once Sam was gone, Dean took to walking around back and forth in the small motel room. Maybe he should not have let his brother go after the witch alone, after all.

“You know what? This is ridiculous,” he said after about five minutes that had crept by excruciatingly slowly. “I should go be his backup, just to be on the safe side.—You stay here and call me if anything witchy is going on with you.”

Dean didn’t wait for an answer, but was already out the door, trying to reach Sam on his cell phone to tell him to turn around. Sam, of course, was too responsible a driver to pick up. Just as Dean was about to think of a plan B, a strange feeling of yearning overwhelmed him, almost knocking the breath out of him, and forced him to put his cell phone away and turn around. He _needed_ to stay here. Every step farther away would be too painful for him to bear.

Only when he was back inside the motel room did he realize what had made him turn back around.

“What the hell, dude?” he snapped at Cas, who was still sitting at the table and looking up at him, ready to ask what he was doing back here so quickly. Dean didn’t give him a chance to speak, though. “Before, you couldn’t get rid of me fast enough and now you’re… you’re… what— _longing_ for me to stay?”

“I did not long… on purpose.” Dean rolled his eyes at Cas’ tone of voice that suggested that ‘longing on purpose’ was even an option. “I was merely concerned for your well-being. Also, I did not want to ‘get rid of you’ before.—It simply makes me feel… uncomfortable when you read my mind.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to my world,” Dean groused as he sat back down in the chair opposite Cas. “If it makes you feel any better, it makes me uncomfortable to be reading your mind.”

“Welcome to my world,” Cas echoed.

They sat in silence for a moment. Dean felt a strange urge to reach over the table and put his hand on Cas’ arm, reassuring him that he was staying here (if nothing else, so that he wouldn’t have to feel that strong longing again). But he held back because touching might lead to mind reading since he still didn’t know the first thing about controlling these powers, and they had just agreed that they both hated this mind reading business.

Instead, Dean remembered another discussion he had wanted to come back to. He broke the silence by clearing his throat and then dove right in, “So, healing is easier if you just sort of let your hand hover over the person, huh?”

Cas glanced at him and then pointedly looked away, staring at the wall. But Dean wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily.

“You grope me on purpose or something?” he tried to bait Cas. “’Cause I can’t remember you ever doing the hover thing with me.”

“I do not ‘grope’ you,” Cas immediately took the bait. “I am sorry if two fingers to your forehead is too much physical contact for you to feel comfortable…”

It hadn’t been two fingers to the forehead in a while, though. It was mostly a hand on his shoulder or arm or cradling his face. But Dean refrained from voicing that. Instead, he said, “Never said I wasn’t comfortable. Just wondering why— _what the hell are you doing_?”

Cas had taken out his angel blade and was now gripping the blade tightly, cutting his hand.

“Here.” Cas held out his hand to Dean, palm up, blood dripping down onto the table between them. “Hold your hand above mine.”

So, apparently, they were practicing healing. Not that Dean would need it.—If Sammy did his job right, they would be back to normal in no time. Still, Cas’ hand was bleeding pretty badly, so Dean shot him a dark reproachful look for his irresponsible behavior and did what the angel had told him to.

“Concentrate on the…” Cas began, but it seemed like Dean was getting better at this whole healing thing because his hand had already started glowing, healing the cut.

“Huh,” Dean said. It wasn’t that hard after all.

The next second Cas had taken the angel blade again and before Dean could react, he had injured his hand for the second time.

“Would you stop cutting yourself?!” Dean exclaimed. “I’m not even sure I have a handle on these powers yet.”

“I trust you,” Cas said in his usual deadpan, looking Dean straight in the eye. But he didn’t hold his hand out this time.

When Dean tried to reach for the injured hand, Cas withdrew it further and instructed, “Now touch me somewhere else.”

“Excuse me?”

“Touch me somewhere else,” Cas repeated in the exact same tone of voice.

Thinking back to all the times Cas had healed him, Dean chose the good old shoulder touch. That was a kind of touch he used on Cas all the time, anyway.

Again, he barely had to concentrate. Instantly, a tingly feeling spread from his hand through the rest of his body—similar to the feeling when he was being healed himself, but still different. He could get used to this. Healing felt great. Almost more intense than being healed. Maybe also more intimate in a way.

“Oh,” Dean said when he realized Cas’ hand had already healed. Reluctantly, he let go of Cas again. So, _that’s_ the difference between the hover technique and the healing touch. “Yeah, okay, I get it.”

He held his hand in front of his mouth, hiding a big yawn. “Using angel mojo is exhausting, man!” he said. “How do you do it?”

He didn’t hear Cas’ reply, however, because in that moment Sammy’s voice was echoing loudly inside his head.

_Dean? Can you hear me? Dean?_

Dean put a finger in his ear and wiggled it around in an attempt to quieten the voice.

_I have no idea if that even is a power you have, but… talking about bad cell phone coverage, huh? Anyway, just checking in. I’m here, looking for the witch right now. Check back in later.—Uhm… Amen?_

“Copy that,” Dean said.

When Cas just looked at him with a puzzled frown on his face, Dean clarified, “That was Sam.” He tapped against the side of his head, indicating how they had been communicating. “He arrived at the witch’s lair or whatever.”

“You realize that he cannot hear you?” Cas asked. “Praying only really works one way.”

“Oh… yeah, sure.”

Cas was starting to play around with his angel blade and Dean was worried that he’d get ideas and continue his cutting himself experiment. He didn’t need telepathy to figure out that Cas was as worried about Sam as he was.

That’s why Dean got up and asked, “Want a beer?” He laid a comforting hand on Cas’ shoulder on his way to get said beer. Instantly, he was assaulted by… not thoughts so much as a myriad of feelings. Etched in concern for Sam were underlying feelings of belonging, of family, of a strong bond to both Dean and Sam, of… love.—God, there was so much love that Dean felt his legs buckle and he had to clutch Cas’ shoulder to brace himself.

“Sorry,” he said, realizing that this was another invasion of privacy, but before he could even think about taking his hand off of Cas’ shoulder, something—some strange sort of magic—rushed through him. He had to steady himself, gripping Cas’ shoulder more tightly.

Sam had done it! The witch had to be dead. All thoughts and feelings that were left behind were his own again, which was in a way relieving and at the same time disappointing, not least because the emotions he had felt just then had been very… comforting for lack of a better word. Good to know the angel felt that way.

Dean desperately wanted Cas to know that he felt the same, but as so often in situations like these, words were escaping him.—Luckily, he knew how to tell the angel what he wanted to without having to use words.

Squeezing Cas’ shoulder, he let all the emotions pass through him that he had just felt coming from Cas, allowing himself to feel what he usually pushed aside. Yes, there was relief that Sam had succeeded, but there was also… the other stuff. The chick flick stuff he’d rather not voice. Since Cas had been an angel his whole multi-million year long life, he probably had a better handle on not reading thoughts and feelings by accident, which was why Dean made sure to push all those feelings at him as best he could.

He knew he had succeeded when Cas was looking up at him with wide eyes. Yeah, the angel got it. Patting Cas’ shoulder twice, Dean finally let go of him, intending on getting that beer, which had turned from a ‘worried about Sam, might as well pass the time drinking’ beer to a victory beer.

Cas, however, had clearly not understood Dean’s plan of nonverbal telepathic conversation. “I did not intend to eavesdrop on your thoughts…” he started, making Dean stop and turn back around.

“No, that’s fine,” Dean quickly reassured him, which did not get Cas to shut up, unfortunately.

“It is just that your thoughts were very loud…”

“Don’t sweat it,” Dean said, barely holding back from adding, “That was on purpose.”

“I never sweat,” Cas stated. “I just wanted you to know—these thoughts… they are mutual.”

Dean couldn’t suppress a smile at that. Apparently, Cas hadn’t even realized that Dean had picked up on his feelings earlier. “Yeah, I got that,” Dean simply said. He had felt them firsthand, after all.

Before the chick flick moment could make Dean too uncomfortable, Cas got his faraway angel radio look.

“Sam is on his way home,” he said after a moment. “His cell phone does not seem to work.”

Dean nodded. In a way, he was glad that all of this was over and done with. Still, the witch had inadvertently done him a favor. Getting a glimpse into Cas’ thoughts and feelings had been… revealing in a way. After all, Dean had found out that healing felt as good for Cas as getting healed did for him.

Smiling to himself, Dean said casually, “Hey, mind healing my throat? It’s still a bit achy from the witch’s death grip.”

Cas squinted at him. “You could have easily healed yourself,” he stated.

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t have wanted to end up smiting myself,” he jokingly repeated Sam’s concerns from earlier.

“I really highly doubt it is possible to…”

“Cas,” Dean interrupted him sternly and then bared his throat for better healing access.

The angel kept staring at him for a moment longer before he reached out, stopping a few inches before his hand actually made contact with Dean’s skin, careful not to touch as he let healing energy flow through his hand. Dean barely felt a tingle.

He rolled his eyes. Yeah, he had totally seen through Cas’ game and exposed his ‘healing is easier if you’re touching someone’ lie. But they had cleared that right up. No reason for the angel to suddenly become all self-conscious and respectful of boundaries when he had never had reservations about invading Dean’s personal space before.

“I think my throat requires the more effective healing method,” Dean prompted.

“More effective…” Cas began, a confused frown on his face, obviously having already forgotten about his bullshit lie, but then he stopped and said, “Oh. Yes, physical contact really is a lot more effective.”

The next second his hand did make contact with the side of Dean’s throat—and there was the all too familiar tingling.

As good as healing Cas had felt, Dean was glad that the angelic powers were back where they belonged: in a real-life angel who clearly had a better grip on them and who made being healed feel almost as good as healing (if not better).

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed my muse by clicking the kudos button or - if you really want to make my day - by writing a comment (long or short, even if I posted the fic years ago, it will make me squee so hard).
> 
> **People who kudosed this fanfiction also kudosed:  
> **
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> ☆ **[The Exception](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449494/chapters/38518652)** (3.2k, _Dean says ‘yes’ to Cas & Cas possesses him._ Inspired by 14x03 / my need for a Dean & Cas hug.)
> 
> ☆ **[Soul Hugs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16112375)** (2.8k, _Over the years, Dean has become a pro at praying. Or has he? - Cas & Dean fluff._)


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